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Climate change may affect the availability and abundance of huckleberries. By better understanding these changes, scientists can help to protect the species that rely on this important resource.

Huckleberries are an important food resource for grizzly bears, comprising about 15 percent of their diet in Glacier National Park and surrounding areas. These high-energy fruits are crucial for bears so they can add enough fat to sustain them for their winter hibernation and reproduce (female bears need approximately 20 percent body fat to have cubs). Changes in climate, however, such as warming temperatures, varying levels of rainfall, and declines in pollinator populations, can alter the availability and size of these berries. These changes not only impact bears, but grouse, elk, and many other species that depend on this precious food resource.

If the abundance of huckleberries is negatively impacted by climate change, bears may begin moving around more in search of food, which could lead to conflicts with humans. But what if scientists could predict changes in the availability of these berries in advance, and either manage land to increase consistency in the availability of these berries or otherwise mitigate conflicts before they even arise?

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is working through a partnership agreement with Swan Valley Connections (SVC) to lead this Earthwatch expedition. SVC, situated in Montana's scenic Swan Valley, is a non-profit organization whose work is a confluence of collaborative conservation and experiential learning.

Join USGS and SVC researchers in “big sky country” in northwestern Montana to collect data to understand and predict the impact of climate change on huckleberries, while assessing the role of huckleberries as food for bears, other mammals, and birds. These efforts could help to protect this important resource and the many species that depend on it.

Activity Level

Lead scientists

Accommodation and food

Why the research is important

Why the research is important

Huckleberries provide the calories bears need during a period of time when they’re fattening up for hibernation and reproduction.

Low food resources could lead bears and other species to search for food outside of their typical range, where they could come into conflict with humans.

In the northwestern U.S., climate change threatens to impact the availability and abundance of huckleberries. What remains unknown, however, is which changes in particular – from water availability to temperature to pollination – will have the most significant impacts and how they interact. It is also unclear how these changes will influence bears, grouse, elk, and many other species that depend on huckleberries as a key food resource.

Help scientists to create maps that can serve as an “early-warning system” for areas likely to have fewer huckleberries, leading to more bear movement.

Using experimental methods, scientists are working to sort out and measure the effects of individual changes in weather and insects on the success of huckleberries. If they find, for example, that low pollination has the largest influence in huckleberry production, scientists and policy-makers could devise new ways to promote the health of bees and other pollinators in the region.

The research will help USGS scientists in understanding the interacting effects of weather, insects, and other conditions that influence huckleberry productivity. USGS will combine this with other data to build maps that can serve as a tool to understand the consistency and location of high productivity huckleberry patches across years. Such maps enable managers to identify more resilient patches that have high productivity in low precipitation years and prioritize areas for restoration or conservation and protection from high severity wildfires. The maps can also serve as an “early-warning system” for low-productivity regions, where bears and other species may roam outside of their typical range in search of food. Predicting this movement in advance could help wildlife managers to prevent conflict with humans.

About the research area

The Flathead National Forest in northwest Montana is located just south of Glacier National Park, with over one million acres of wild ruggedness, over 1,000 species of plants, and hundreds of species of animals, including grizzly bears, wolves, cougars, moose, elk, deer, wolverine, and many other species. This area has been inhabited for thousands of years by Native Americans, including the Kootenai and Salish peoples. In addition to the scenic beauty of the mountains, lakes, and rivers, the area has many community festivals, rodeos, Native American pow-wows, and art shows.

Daily life in the field

Itinerary

This is a summary:

Day 1: Meet, travel to field site

Day 2-6:

Survey huckleberries

Conduct remote camera work

Identify pollinators

Day 7: Departure

When you arrive, researchers and field staff will conduct an orientation and train you on the work you’ll be doing. You’ll also receive important safety training for working in the backcountry. Field work will begin on the second day, where you will be involved with:

Huckleberry surveys: As huckleberries are not cultivated, your help is needed to apply treatments designed by USGS to huckleberries in the field. You will count the berries in the field to understand how changes in water, temperature, and pollination influence the number of berries available as food.

The Scientists

MEET THE LEAD SCIENTIST

Lindsay

Wancour

Field Program Coordinator, Swan Valley Connections

ABOUT Lindsay Wancour

Lindsay Wancour is the field program coordinator at Swan Valley Connections. Her work and education focus on watershed health and community engagement, and she is passionate about finding ways to integrate experiential education into project work.

Accommodations and Food

Accommodations and Food

House in Swan Valley;

Collaborative cooking

You will stay in a house located in the Swan Valley with access to electricity and refrigeration. There is phone and internet access, but it is limited (see project briefing). Shared rooms are equipped with either bunk-beds or twin beds. Volunteers will share in preparation of evening meals, with a focus on locally-available and organic food. Teams will bring packed lunches into the field each day.

“I had a great time.”

I really enjoyed this expedition. Every morning we drove through beautiful mountain scenery to reach one of the study sites.The sites are located in forest areas on mountain sides so we got to do some nice walks too. Since the sites are off-trail we always had some bush-whacking. It wasn't overly difficult but does call for some level of fitness. I enjoyed the field work, which was mostly counting huckleberries and noting what stage of development they were in. But we also collected bees (or at least tried), constructed equipment to mimic drought conditions, and worked with the cameras that are set up to take pictures of the bushes and any animals eating the berries. The scientists were fun and interesting, as they always are on Earthwatch Expeditions. We didn't see any bears, but I learned a lot about them from the expedition scientists. They did a great job with the food.The last night we rented kayaks and paddle boards on Holland Lake and had a great time on that scenic mountain lake.

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Betsy Snow|10/9/2017

“Huckleberries for Bears and for Me”

Grizzly bears love huckleberries. Huckleberries are a large part of the late season diet for both Grizzly and Black Bears. This project is about understanding huckleberries as a food source for bears and understanding what impact climate changes have on huckleberries. This project allows you to be in the beautiful Swan Valley of Montana and hike to huckleberry plots and gather information about the huckleberry crop. Our group would visit a couple of plots a day and would record information about specific bushes. We walked in on trails and then usually had to do some uneven off trail hiking to the predefined plots. This all sounds kind of tedious but Tabitha and Adam (our scientists) were so knowledgeable about everything in the area that it was possible to learn lots about the ecology while you counted huckleberries and hiked the trails. The biggest bonus was you could eat huckleberries all day long (as long as your didn't eat the berries of the marked bushes we were studying). We all carried Bear Spray just in case we encountered a bear but during the week we were there we never saw a bear. We did capture a picture of a black bear on one of the game cameras at one of the berry plots. Our accommodations were in a very nice vacation house in the Swan Valley. Each night half of us would cook a delicious recipe provided to us by Tabitha while the other half would enter data. The recipes were so good - I took a couple of them home with me. When Tabitha was on site we had lectures in the evening. Lots of discussion followed before heading to bed to start another day. Lesson I learned from the project was that healthy huckleberries are very critical to the Grizzly bears existence. As the climate changes, this can have a huge effect on the grizzly population since a grizzly needs a certain percentage of body fat to reproduce. The interconnection of everything is truly amazing.

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